Summary
Stanza 5 continues to play on the idea of typically "ugly" or horrible things appearing, in the context of wealth and privilege, to be beautiful. The speaker concedes with the same degree of sarcasm as in the previous stanza that "nobody is saying" the rich don't die, or that their deaths aren't tragic, but that "they make excellent corpses, among the expensive flowers...."
Analysis
Even in death, the rich enjoy the privilege of appearing manicured. Their dead bodies, like their refuse, "is a neat brilliancy." There is a degree more earnestness in this stanza than the others, because there is no denying that the rich are mortal just like everyone else; and from that thought, Brooks concedes that "Sometimes their passings are even more painful than ours," which recognizes the personhoods of the rich; she recognizes that regardless of their complicity in the wealth gap, they have people who love them and care about their wellbeing.
The second half of the stanza returns to a more resentful register with the words, "It is just that," which indicates another qualification. "It is just that so often they live till their hair is white," is to say that the rich enjoy longer life expectancies than the Black working class. They don't face the same threats to their lives or the dearth of resources to fight illness.
